ROYAL MAIL – PRIVATISATION

ROYAL MAIL – PRIVATISATION

The Government announced late yesterday that it had placed its final shareholding in Royal Mail with a number of city institutions to be sold overnight to institutional investors.

As explained with the previous 15% sale in June 2015, the process for concluding the sale was undertaken under the terms of the original Act of Parliament.  As such this enabled the Government to proceed without any public or parliamentary scrutiny of their proposals.

The CWU has condemned the sale and made it clear that a fully privatised Royal Mail significantly increases the threat to the continuation of a 6 day delivery service to over 29 million UK addresses, something which the British public has enjoyed for over 350 years.  A copy of the union’s press release is attached to this LTB.

In response to the disgraceful actions of the Government, it is now more important than ever for the union to secure stronger legislation for the protection of daily deliveries as a key part of our People’s Post Campaign, alongside continuing to campaign for renationalisation of Royal Mail under a Labour Government.

In the coming weeks, the union will be stepping up our activities and undertaking a series of communications with our members to highlight why their support for the union’s People’s Post Campaign is crucial to defending the service, their jobs, terms and conditions, whilst also helping shape the future of the postal industry.

As part of the final sell-off of its shares the Government gave employees an additional 1% in the company on the 5^th October, and our understanding is that a further 1% will now be given to employees as a result of today’s announcement.  We will provide further information on this once this has been confirmed.  In the meantime, please ensure that this LTB is circulated to our members in all workplaces.

Any enquiries on the Government’s actions should be addressed to the General Secretary’s Department and any enquiries on the industrial impact should be addressed to the Deputy General Secretary (Postal).

Yours sincerely

Dave Ward                                                    Terry Pullinger

General Secretary                                                  Deputy General Secretary (P)